


dangerous time

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, F/M, s4e19: Synchrony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 00:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Based off the prompt "things you said that made me feel real".





	

**Author's Note:**

> Original post: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/156645050788/35-things-you-said-that-made-me-feel-real-please

 

_4x19: synchrony_

They stop for dinner before heading back to the hotel, even though Scully’s stomach is wrenched to the point of not wanting to eat. She picks blandly at a salad, and Mulder looks embarrassed to be eating a larger meal. They talk about the case, about Jason and Lisa and the strange old man. “Skinner’s not going to believe you,” she points out, spearing a limp piece of lettuce with her fork.

Mulder snorts. “Does he ever? Your supporting my theory might help, though.”

“Mm,” Scully hums around a forkful of lettuce and dressing. “I didn’t say I believed you.”

“Senior thesis,” he says smugly, before taking a sip of water.

She rolls her eyes, making a face at him. “As long as we’re on the subject…” she says conversationally. “What’s your opinion on the butterfly effect?”

“Are you referring to _A Sound of Thunder_? Ray Bradbury, dinosaurs, crushed butterfly?” He is smirking at her.

Scully shrugs. “The theory in general. If you really believe that the old man was Jason, then how do you think his traveling back to kill his younger self affected the future? Did he irreversibly change the course of time, the way everything’s going to turn out?”

“Paradoxes abundant as they are in this situation, Scully, if you’re using _A Sound of Thunder_ as your guide, then this case wouldn’t be possible. In that story, the time travelers couldn’t run into themselves for fear of murdering themselves on sight.” Mulder grins at her over the worn table. “And what are your thoughts?”

“On the butterfly effect?” Scully shuffles the salad on her plate. “Well, time travel is such an extravagant idea that there’s no telling what the aftershocks could be. But I think it depends on the magnitude of the event. The bigger the thing that the hypothetical time traveler would be changing, the more severe the results would be. As we don’t know the expanse of Jason’s potential future research, there’s no telling how it will affect the purported future.”

“So you’re saying that saving just one little person wouldn’t be as destructive as preventing a mass world event,” he says.

Mulder knows too much, she assumes, about wanting to go back and save people. These past few years, she’s learned a little about it herself. Time is a dangerous thing; every minute that ticks forward, she has less time left. An ultimatum. She’d turn back the clock without a second thought. “Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what I was referring to.”

He rubs his nose, contemplatively. “Jason wanted to go back and save Lisa,” he says. “Before he knew she was okay. Right before he died.”

“Oh,” she says. Everyone wants to change the past, even if science fiction warns against it.

She pushes her plate aside, scrape of china against wood, and grabs the check before Mulder has a chance to.

Boston is too cold, even in early March, and is ten times colder with the sickness crawling through her head. She shivers unknowingly, and Mulder drapes his coat over hers, a bulky layering that seems inane. “Thank you, Mulder, but I’m fine,” she says, trying to shrug out of it.

He tugs the coat tighter around her, effectively blocking the wind. She sighs irritably, and wrenches her arms through the sleeves.

“What would you change?” he asks out of the blue.

“If I went back in time?”

He nods.

Scully huffs a little as she tries to untangle their coats from each other around her torso. Mulder looks cold without his coat, and she is definitely going to make him take it back in a minute. “I used to think I would save the world, if I went back,” she says. “When I wrote my thesis. But now… I think Missy would be enough.” She swallows, watches their shoes on the pavement instead of looking at him. “I mean, you can understand that.”

It’s unspoken. They both know he’d save Samantha.

“I can,” he says, and she feels his fingers brush her shoulder lightly through the coats.

Her head lifts a little automatically, and she is about to insist that he take his coat back (the wind chill is fierce, slicing over her already red cheeks like bitter knives) when the blood starts its descent from her nostrils. She sighs, and her hand scrabbles at her left pocket before she remembers that this is Mulder’s coat and her Kleenex is under the flapping edges of his coat.

Mulder’s hand dips into the pocket on the other side and pulls out a wad of tissues, passing them to her. She didn’t know he carried Kleenex. “Thank you,” she mumbles. They’ve finally reached their car, and she leans against it as she holds the wad to her nose. It spreads fast, and she’ll have to check it when they get back to the hotel.

Mulder stands facing her, eyes curiously soft. “I wouldn’t _just_ save Samantha, if I went back,” he says. His thumb scrubs a little at her cheek, and she’s more embarrassed than the time with the barbecue sauce, because at least that wasn’t a dying sign, it could be forgotten. “I’d save you, too,” he says, voice as soft as his eyes.

She swallows, ducks her head to look at the pavement. “Thank you,” she says hoarsely - because what else can she say? - and lifts her chin to smile at him. She can’t joke about this ( _well, just wait a little while longer for that time machine of yours, Mulder_ ) because it’s too serious to joke about. Too tragic.

He doesn’t smile back, because there really isn’t anything to smile about. She is dying. His thumb lingers on her cheek for a heartbeat before moving away, before he rounds the car to get in.

Her two coats - one ridiculously oversized and inexplicably warm - gap where she’s left them unbuttoned and let a sharp chill in along her stomach. She doesn’t think she minds. It reminds her she is alive. 

 


End file.
